A Nairobi businesswoman is counting her loses after she was ordered to surrender her entire fleet of buses to the state.In a ruling by High Court Judge Mumbi Ngugi on Monday, September 21, Rose Musanda was ordered to forfeit her six vehicles, which included her Toyota Axio saloon car, to the Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) after she was linked to drug trafficking.The judge ruled that evidence presented in court proved that the property had been obtained through illegal means.“It is my finding that the applicant; Assets Recovery Agency has established, on a balance of probabilities that the motor vehicles and funds the subject of this application are proceeds of crime, and that they should be forfeited to the State,” she ruled. Justice Mumbi Ngugi during a court sitting.Daily Nation She also disclosed that Musanda failed to show a legitimate source of her wealth.Additionally, Justice Ngugi ordered her to forfeit a total of Ksh1.7 million to ARA contained in two accounts, one holding Ksh1,462,963 and the other Ksh 325,712.Prosecution argued that the money had been obtained by the suspect through illegal narcotic trade.In her defence, Musanda however, claimed that she raised the money through the sale of her plot in Kakamega county.She further added that she had inherited Ksh 500,000 from her late husband with a supplement from her income in the matatu and second-hand clothes businesses.Musanda had been charged in June, alongside her daughters and son-in-law, at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport with narcotics trafficking.The forfeiture comes just weeks after the state made a breakthrough in recovering illegally obtained wealth around the country.In August, Treasury CS Ukur Yatani proposed the creation of the Criminal Assets Recovery Fund which will handle all the money obtained as proceeds of corruption. At the time, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) recovered approximately Ksh7.9 billion in 6 years.The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP), on the other hand, is targeting to recover Ksh72 billion from state officials linked to graft.Earlier in the year, the ODPP transferred Ksh2 billion recovered from corruption in the country to help fight the Covid-19 pandemic that had paralysed the economy. The Milimani Law Courts in Nairobi as pictured on November 18, 2019.Simon KiraguKenyans.co.ke
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